by Ruth Owen
Noel’s great-grandmother on her mother’s side had been an advocate for women’s rights, and the doctor stiffened with every ounce of her suffragette heritage. “I can do the research as well as Dr. Harvey. Better, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m sure you can.” Donovan flashed her the edge of a disturbingly disarming smile. “I’m just not sure you’re going to get the chance. The mountains you plan to explore lie at the heart of St. Michelle, both geographically and spiritually. The islanders won’t want a woman—especially a foreign woman—treading on their sacred ground.”
“But I have permits.” She reached down to pat her bulging, soft-side briefcase. “I’ve got dozens of them—everything from trespassing exceptions to a fishing license. I’ve been legally approved by every bureau in this country’s government.”
“Maybe so, sweetheart,” Donovan explained with a cynical smile, “but that government is two islands and fifty miles of ocean away. Official permits don’t mean jack sh—er, squat on St. Michelle. The only law these people live by are the traditional tribal-Catholic-spiritual customs they’ve adhered to for the last hundred-odd years. And the only recognized authority is the chief shaman, Papa Guinea.”
“A shaman? Like a witch doctor?”
“Got it in one,” he commented gruffly.
He slowed the Jeep to an almost responsible speed and turned off the main road onto a narrow, green-canopied path. The overgrown lane made the road they’d just left seem like a superhighway, but Noel hardly noticed the new bumps and potholes. She was too busy thinking about the bulging stack of impressive-looking permits in her bag—useless permits if what Donovan said was true. She winced, recalling all the time and trouble she’d spent procuring the documents—all the hours she’d wasted while the island bureaucrats sent her from room to room to room. The officials must have known from the start that the documents would be worthless once she reached the island, but they’d taken her company’s money just the same. Bastards, she thought grimly, realizing too late that her country didn’t have a lock on dishonest politicians.
All right. If they weren’t going to play fair, neither would she. “Couldn’t we just sneak into the mountains by the back roads?”
“We could—if we didn’t care about having the entire population out for our blood. Don’t let the sleepy atmosphere fool you. These people take their religion seriously, and defiling the sacred lands is as good as a death sentence.”
She glanced at the man beside her, the only person she’d met who’d told her anything like the truth. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the thought. Actually, she wasn’t one bit comfortable with the thought. Depending on Sam Donovan for a ride was bad enough—depending on him for anything more bordered on suicidal. She’d rather have trusted a force-five hurricane than her guide, but she had no choice. The Eden Project was her responsibility, and she needed Donovan’s help to get it done.
“All right. If this Papa Guinea is the person I need to see, then you’d better take me to him.”
“You don’t just waltz up to Papa’s door and demand to see him. Not unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a chicken.”
“Surely you don’t believe in voodoo magic,” Noel scoffed.
“I’ll give you a free piece of advice,” he said in a voice so chilling, it raised the hackles on the back of her neck. “If you want to make it through the next ten days you’ll show some respect for ‘voodoo magic.’ When you stepped out of the plane you stepped over the line. You’re not in the civilized world anymore. The rules are different here.”
The rules are different here. She watched the shadows of the overhanging vines slide across the hard contours of his face and body. His expression was closed tighter than a tomb. She suspected he was the kind of man a person could know for years, and not really know at all. The kind of man who could pretend to care about you, then turn around and leave you without even saying good—
“We’ll see him,” Donovan stated suddenly.
She shook her head, putting aside memories she’d boxed and shut away almost thirty years before. “See who?”
Donovan grimaced. “Papa Guinea, of course. He’s holding a general assembly tonight at the old church. If we approach him together, we might be able to convince him that you’re harmless. At least, we might convince him—if you keep your mouth shut. Think you can do that for an evening, sweetheart?”
“I’m not your—” Noel began, but her words died in her throat. At that moment the Jeep reached the end of the green-walled path, leaving the close, humid depths of the jungle behind. They came out on a bluff overlooking the island’s small but bustling harbor. But as far as Noel was concerned, they’d entered another world.
A cool, salt breeze blew off the water, reviving her, filling her with the rich, secret smells of the ocean. Ships of every size and description wandered across the shining blue meadow of the bay, their seemingly random movements fitting together into a huge, chaotic, yet somehow precise symmetry.
She smiled, charmed beyond words. This was the paradise she’d imagined as a child, the warm, sun-kissed dream that had kept her spirit warm during all those long, sunless winters she’d spent in her grandmother’s rigid and joyless household. It was the dream that had kept her child’s heart from breaking as she watched her beautiful, once-laughing mother fade away to a pale, lifeless shell.…
She was so caught up in the memory that she didn’t immediately register that Donovan had pulled the Jeep to a stop. By the time she did, he’d already hopped out of the driver’s seat and yanked two heavy cases from the open back. She turned, noticing the low, Mediterranean-style bungalow perched like an elegant bird on the bluff’s edge, shaded by immense, ancient banyan trees. “This looks a little small for a hotel.”
“That’s because it isn’t one,” he grunted as he hoisted one of the cases on his broad shoulder. “There aren’t any hotels on St. Michelle. No tourist trade. Visitors, when we get them, stay in private homes. You’ll have to stay here.”
An uneasy suspicion formed in her mind. “Where’s here?”
He readjusted the case, and gave a curt nod in the direction of the nearest banyan tree. She glanced toward it and caught sight of a weathered wooden sign hanging from the lowest branch, swinging gently in the lazy harbor breeze. The white lettering was sun-faded but still legible. S. DONOVAN. Her gaze whipped back to her guide, who stood staring at the sign with an expression as glum as her own.
“Like I said, sweetheart,” he told her grimly. “Things would have been a hell of a lot less complicated if you’d been a man.”
From: [email protected]
Received: from relay1.sheffld.com by
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To: [email protected]
Subject: EDEN PROJECT
Text: Hey Babe, what’s shakin’? Did you catch the drift on voodoo witch doctors and sacred lands? We might be on the right frequency after all. Einstein out.
From: [email protected]
Received: from relay2.sheffld.com by
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To: [email protected]
Subject: EDEN PROJECT
Text: Voodoo-schmoodoo. Check out the doc’s blood pressure when she looks at Donovan. There’s more going on here than meets the super VGA monitor. Lay you odds we’ll have our equation solved before I can bet the trifecta at Hialeah! PINK out.
TWO
God had ten commandments. Sam Donovan had three. Never drink alone. Never cheat a friend. And never, ever do business with a woman.
He’d already broken two of them.
He’d broken number one when he’d gotten Jack Fagen’s letter—delivered only a week late because it was stamped Urgent—informing him that Dr. Harvey was being replaced by a Dr. Noel Revere. Cursing, Sam had poured himself a shot of straight tequila, and tossed it back in a single gulp.
He’d broken commandment number three when he’d reached the airfield, and watche
d the crew from the charter plane unload the doctor’s equipment—and the doctor. Surprised, he watched the slim, dark-haired figure walk with remarkable dignity down the rickety steel steps. He hadn’t expected one of Sheffield’s top computer scientists to be so young. Or to be wearing a sweat-drenched silk shirt that hugged her very unscientific curves like a fast car on a slick track.
He’d had plenty of opportunity to flag down the pilot—to explain that this whole trip was a waste and that the lady should head back where she came from. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d stood in the shadows of the hangar, studying her like a moray eel studies a passing angelfish. She’d lifted her chin and marched across the field, her petite build at odds with her determined expression. Wrong fish, he’d thought as a rare smile tugged at his lips. She’s more like a blowfish—a tiny terror that swells to twice its size when it’s riled.
On the drive to his bungalow he’d discovered just how accurate that description had been—the lady was about as angelic as a lighted stick of dynamite. Still, Sheffield Industries was paying him a great deal of money for playing tour guide to her and her equipment—a cake job. He didn’t know what she was researching and—beyond the fact that it wouldn’t hurt the ecosystem of the island—he didn’t much care. The good doctor could have all the secrets she wanted—as long as Sheffield Industries paid him cold, hard cash. Hell, for enough money he could even overlook the fact that she was a woman.
But as he pushed open the door to the bedroom that had recently been his, and saw a black silk stocking draped over the end of his carved mahogany four-poster, he silently admitted that overlooking her sex was going to be a hell of a lot tougher than he thought.
He stopped, listening to make sure that the shower at the end of the hall was still going strong. Then he headed across the bedroom toward his closet, bristling with territorial ire at the feminine clutter draping his once inviolate domain. Hell, the place was even starting to smell like a boudoir! And the worst part of all was that it was his own damn fault. He could have given her the lumpy living-room couch. She was expecting it—when she realized the bungalow had only one bedroom she’d headed toward the living room without a single word of complaint. That’s when he’d spoken up like some overaged Boy Scout, blurting out that she could use his room.
That soft heart will get you into more trouble than a dog has fleas.
The gravel-voiced memory brought a ghost of a smile to Donovan’s lips. Uncle Gus. Damn, he hadn’t thought of that sharp-eyed old reprobate’s favorite saying in years, not since—
Donovan stiffened, his smile hardening into a tight, bitter line. Ruthlessly, he shoved Uncle Gus’s memory aside, just as he’d locked away all the memories of his former life. He didn’t want to deal with his past. And here, in the lazy, languid world of St. Michelle, he’d found he didn’t have to.
He opened the closet door and reached into the dark interior, to the back corner where he kept his most prized possession—his tackle box. Fishing was the closest thing Sam had to a religion, and he did his best thinking while he was casting line. He intended to spend the next hour in well-deserved solitude on the rock jetty below his bungalow, deciding how best to present the doctor’s case to Papa Guinea. It wouldn’t be easy since the island’s views on women were right out of the Middle Ages. Still, getting her access to the sacred grounds was part of his job. The other was keeping her undeniably shapely little rear end out of trouble until—
His thoughts ended abruptly as his fingers closed, not on the metallic hardness of the tackle box, but on a mass of soft, silky material. Jerking back his arm, he extracted a handful of frilly feminine underwear. “What the hell is this!”
“Garters and camisoles,” a helpful nearby voice replied. “Victoria’s Secret’s Spring Sale. Excellent buy.”
Donovan started. He glanced around, assuring himself that he was the only one in the room. Yet someone had spoken, and the tinny voice definitely didn’t belong to the doc. “Who said that?”
“I did, dude,” the voice replied, this time accompanied by a short, mechanical whir. “What’s shakin’?”
The whir gave the speaker away. Processing chips. Following the sound, Sam glanced over at the ironwork table near his bedroom’s wide French doors. Currently, the antique table was piled high with very modern computer equipment, which gleamed like newly minted coins in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun.
In the midst of the scattered equipment were a couple of notebook PCs and multimedia speakers, surmounted by an ultralight camcorder on a small tripod stand. As he watched, the camcorder slanted forty-five degrees to the side, in a strangely human simulation of a person cocking his head.
Sam moved closer, his anger momentarily overridden by wonder. “Einstein?”
The camcorder jerked up and down. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out. And you’re Sam Donovan, the ‘Lucky Irish.’ ”
Sam rubbed his chin. “You know about that nickname?”
“Sure do. And I know about Syria, and the assassination plot in Germany, and saving the dozen people in—”
“Okay, I believe you.” Sam had forgotten the computer had access to all his records. All his records, he thought as a frown creased his forehead. The last thing he wanted was to have his self-righteous employer find out about the months following his stint in the army—months he’d spent the last two years trying to forget. “Let’s just keep my past between the two of us. Still, I guess you’d better call me Sam, considering how much you know about me.”
“Sure thing. Pleased to meet ya, Sam, and so’s PINK. Aren’t you, babe?”
“Charmed,” agreed a higher-pitched voice from a speaker on the far side of the table. “You’re the cat’s pajamas.”
“Thanks, I think,” Sam answered. Fagen had sent him material on the prototypes’ technical features, but he hadn’t warned him that they were quite so, well, human. He peered at the equipment and took another step closer, intrigued. It’s been a long time since anything’s made me this curious.
Not that long. He glanced down at the frilly and delicate underthings still clutched in his fist, and thought about their leggy, brainy, and completely perplexing owner. She’d been a puzzle right from the start. The lady had the body of a centerfold and enough letters after her name to start her own alphabet, but her mouth seemed permanently fixed in a frown. He’d never seen a mouth more in need of a smile. Or a kiss.
PINK’s camcorder spun in a tight arc, focusing on his chest. “Interesting. You don’t look the least bit dirty.”
He looked down, giving himself a quick scan. His jeans were a little dusty from the trip, but that was all. “Why should I be d—”
“And you don’t look beastly, either,” PINK continued, rotating her cam toward Einstein. “He doesn’t resemble a filthy beast. Noel’s mistaken.”
Sam’s jaw tightened dangerously. “She called me a filthy beast?”
“ ‘Filthy, hulking, oversexed, macho-jerk beast’ were her exact words, I believe,” Einstein supplied helpfully. “Maybe she needs her eyes examined.”
“For starters,” Sam growled, his former compassion dissolving. Several descriptive words for Noel Revere came to mind, none of them repeatable. For now. “Look, all I want is my tackle box. Where’d she put it?”
“Under the bed,” E replied. “She said it smelled like fish.”
“Of course it smells like fish!” He hunkered down beside the bed, dumping the undergarments in a heap on the edge of the covers. Sheffield Industries isn’t paying me enough, he thought as he inched his large frame under the cramped space beneath his bed. Not nearly enough.
He spotted his tackle box shoved into the far corner next to the headboard. With a grunt of triumph he scooted completely under the bed and grabbed the handle, pulling it toward him. Okay, so maybe it did smell like fish. Badly. But that still didn’t give her the right to rearrange his things. Or to call him—what was it?—a filthy, hulking, oversexed, macho-jerk beast.
He’d met h
er kind before. Hell, one of the reasons he’d left the States was to get away from people like her. Self-righteous harpies who wouldn’t know a charitable thought if it bit them in the behind. Since she’d arrived the lady hadn’t had one good thing to say about him—or about St. Michelle. And Sam, who owed the island and its inhabitants more than he could ever repay, took that as a personal insult.
Two years earlier he’d drifted into the harbor, as scarred and battered as a piece of tide-tossed driftwood. Working as a mechanic on a ship with a mostly legal cargo, he’d joined his crewmates in a hurricane of a bender—and had ended up alone and nursing a force-five hangover in the local jail. When he got out he’d found that his ship had sailed without him, leaving him stranded and virtually penniless, with only the clothes on his back to his name.
But fickle Lady Luck hadn’t deserted him. To his surprise, the simple, goodhearted townsfolk had taken him in like one of their own. He was a complete stranger—they hadn’t even known his name—yet they’d generously shared their meager wealth with him as if they’d been richer than Rockefeller. They’d taught him a way of living between the sea and the sky, between the storms of rage and calms of despair that still occasionally battered his soul. They taught me how to live in the eye of the hurricane. And if I don’t move too far in any direction, I can just manage to survive—
The sound of an opening door curtailed his thoughts. Sam heard Dr. Revere’s voice. “Hi, E. Hi, PINK.”
He froze. Dammit, she wasn’t supposed to be finished so soon. And once she’d finished she was supposed to spend a solid ten minutes primping. The women he’d known always primped after showers. Damn, it was just like her to mess up his plans by doing something unexpect—
Sam’s internal monologue screeched to a halt as Noel walked to the bed and dropped her bath towel to the tile floor inches from Sam’s nose. His mattress-limited perspective cut off everything above her ankles. Unfortunately, that left him with an unobstructed view of her slim, provocatively arched feet, her toenails painted a ridiculously frivolous hot pink, her light, graceful step, and the undeniable knowledge that she was standing above him as naked as the day she was born.